Democrats, This Ain't Over

By Alex Walsh

My fellow Americans, we must be on guard. We are now in danger of having two consecutive Presidents whose lives could be made into major motion pictures before they’re even out of office. Given its fascinating cast of characters and thrilling plot twists, the 2008 election really just screams to be adapted to the big screen, or at least as an HBO mini-series. Fortunately, unlike Oliver Stone’s “W,” this is a story that has an ending: the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Roll credits.

Well, not really.

While that may be a dramatically satisfying endpoint for my hypothetical docudrama, history tends not to take its cues from cinema. The end of the campaign is the beginning of the administration. The President-Elect and his party, fresh from their electoral victory, are now prepared to savor their rewards: governing a nation at war and in recession (how many people would go on game shows if it offered prizes like that?).

The Democratic Party now controls the Presidency, the House and the Senate. While the timid Democratic Congress of 2006 seemed unsure, this time there really can’t be any doubt as to who is the governing party. This presents an opportunity to make some real progressive change in this country, but success is never certain. And here’s the kicker: it’s not up to those (mostly) fine men and women you just sent to Washington. It’s up to you.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention this year, John McCain said of his party that “We came to change Washington, but it changed us.” Clearly, we can’t always trust the people we send to the Capitol not to go native. But we can keep an eye on them. During the campaign, Obama emphasized that real change comes from the bottom up. That’s where you come in. Keep talking, Democrats. Don’t be afraid to criticize your leadership. Somebody’s got to keep them in line.

No matter how much you may like Barack Obama, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, they’re inevitably going to get some things wrong. And when they do, we need to make sure they know it. We watched as the Republican Party under Bush abandoned its core principles, and we have seen the price they paid for that.

My intention, of course, isn’t to say we should demand ideological purity on every issue. During the campaign, President-Elect Obama promised that, as President, he would compromise with Republicans to govern in a non-partisan fashion. I’m all for that. Cooperation is necessary, and even more than that, desirable. Nobody likes people who don’t listen to anyone else. A genuine compromise is nothing to be avoided but, all too often, “bipartisanship” becomes a euphemism for surrender. Before we can meet in the middle, we need to define our position and make sure our representatives and their Republican partners know where we stand. That’s going to take a lot of communication, and maybe a few primaries to boot out some incumbents who don’t live up to their potential.

All that “Don’t trust your elected officials” talk sounds almost Republican, doesn’t it? Well, a little bit of skepticism just makes it sweeter when they actually live up to the trust that has been placed in them. But what it all comes down to is the people. We worked hard to win this election. But we’ll have to work harder to fulfill its promise. The inauguration of President Obama won’t suddenly set everything aright. If we feel tempted to rest on our laurels, we should remember the immortal words of Han Solo: “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.”

Alex Walsh graduated summa cum laude from Stony Brook University in 2007 with a degree in Political Science. He was Associate Editor of the Stony Brook Press.